Recipient Dr Marthe Achtnich, University of Oxford
Date 01 February, 2017
Amount £2674
Summary The European 'migrant crisis' is a pressing humanitarian and governance challenge. Over 1.3 million migrants crossed the Mediterranean in the last two years alone. Many sub-Saharan migrants rely upon illegal enterprises (smuggling and trafficking networks) and support (bonds, kinship networks) to undertake their journeys. Furthermore, migrants' movements result in transformations of their perceived identities as they interface with new institutional structures, geopolitical arrangements and political situations. Yet ethnographic understandings of migrants' experiences of sub-Saharan Africa and particularly Libya are scant. Longitudinal understandings of migrants' lives - the legacy of having moved through politically unstable Libya - are missing in academic and policy realms.